SPRING PRACTICE PERIOD: Stories from the Lotus Sutra

Dogen-Zenji so cherished the Lotus Sutra that he actually carved a selection of it into his door. This, the core text of not only Zen but the whole of Mahayana Buddhism, has never lost its appeal among practitioners of the Way. Join us for our SPRING PRACTICE PERIOD: Stories From the Lotus Sutra led by Sensei Joshin Byrnes, Sensei Genzan Quennell

Sitting Still While the World Burns?

TO LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST please enter or confirm your email address below:

To listen to the free dharma talks on this site, we'd like to invite you to our mailing list.
After entering your email, this page will reload, and you will have instant and unlimited access to the hundreds of dharma podcasts on this site.

Episode Description: During a zazenkai (day of silent meditation), Joshin patiently teases out some subtle, on-the-ground interrelationships among not knowing, bearing witness, and loving action. How much more genuine does our relationship to all kinds of situations become, when we remove the barrier of our knowing, our answers, in order to become the situation itself? And can that not-knowing then give energizing knowledge of our widest resources for response?

On a related theme (both themes embodied in Nansen’s “Ordinary Mind is the Way”), Joshin probes how it could be that our ordinary lives — sometimes so full of pain, complacency, drudgery — are precisely “the way.” We find a vital clue in our ample capacity to walk through those lives unseeingly — or with eyes wide open.

Bio: Joshin Byrnes is a Dharma Holder and student of Roshi Joan Halifax, having received Hoshi from her in 2014. He is a Zen priest and currently serves as Upaya’s President and point person for the Upaya’s residency program. He is also the director of Upaya’s Chaplaincy program and is a core faculty member with a focus on systems theory. Joshin has a long background working in social service nonprofits and community philanthropy. He worked in the AIDS epidemic throughout the 1990s and since 2003 has led a variety of community foundations focused on social change and community leadership. His academic background includes undergraduate and graduate work in philosophy at St. Meinrad College and Archabbey, theology at the Aquinas Institute at St. Louis University while he was a member of the Dominican Order, and then early music performance at New England Conservatory of Music, and doctoral work in medieval musicology at New York University. He is ever interested in finding ways of life that are both deeply contemplative and fully engaged with the world.